Mood:  spacey

Now I know how the museum survives.  The entire year's budget is supplied by a nuclear power plant!  Money, power, and charity are a very old triad.  Sometimes I've worried a little about the dangerous monster sitting on the side of the river five miles away.  Now my feelings are stirred.  I love the museum and have always wanted the best for it while I have always viewed the nuclear power plant as a blight upon the soil.  Now I understand that the existence of both are inter-related.

My three hours at the museum yesterday went very well.  A new retrospective exhibit by the artist Wolf Kahn opened and we are getting a sharp rise in attendence.  I'm excited because there is a lot I can learn from looking at this artist.  He will be speaking at the museum about his art on August 10th and I'm going to take a tranquilizer and go hear him talk.  The drug will be for mild anxiety.  From experience I've learned that people at these popular lectures get sandwiched in together uncomfortatbly close.  Too many human bodies makes me self conscious and my guts begin to rumble.

A good tactic for work days at the museum is to arrive having done little else in the morning.  It is a mistake to exhaust my reserves of energy before work.  Yesterday I wanted to paint really bad but instead I put a muzzle on Plum and brushed her.  A very basic, repetative activity requiring no sophistication of thought.

Wolf Kahn spends half his year living on a property in West Brattleboro.  He likes to paint his barn and other Vermont barns quite a bit.  I didn't know it but for the last 10 years every time I've visited my psychiatrist the enormus red barn art print she has framed opposite the therapy couch is a Wolf Kahn barn.  The original is in the show, and my, doesn't it look better than the print.

I've been thinking what to ask for Christmas - because confused parents sometimes are greatful for a little help.  I want big, fat art books with lots of pictures on artists who have now grabbed my attention.  They are artists who I want to steal technique from.  I need

El Grecco

Gaugain

Francis Bacon

I'm starting to think more than ever about color and how the paint lies on the canvass.  Clumps, dashes, raked bits or flat.  I need to look at original artwork by the masters and try to ask of it new questions.  Like, under the yellow, was there blue painted first and does it peek out from under the yellow? 

Posted by dignifyme at 7:36 AM EDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Had to stop painting this morning because I felt weak standing. Apparently I woke with a urinary track infection from dehydration. Took some painkillers and they worked, but there must also be a low grade fever from the infection as well.

I don't think I have diabetes. But that is always a worry. Now that I have a normal appetite the binge eating disorder is rearing it's ugly head. Didn't know that mine was so bad. I know that my sister has it bad. She has had it for years. It became serious for her a little earlier than it became serious for me, but by the end of our twenties we each had knowlege of this behavioral weakness. I don't know why I'm suddenly conscious of it now. Probably it is the medication change. I'm getting more memories of the time before I started Zyprexa and Seroquil. The last eight years feel like a vaction from "the real me". I once talked on-line to a mother of a schizophrenic who had been telling her that "he felt like he was dying". Well, up until Geodone I'd been telling Mike that for years. It was always in the context of physical change - a combination of bad eating habits, constant hunger, lethargy, and weight gain had all made me feel like life itself was ebbing, leaving me. Now I wonder. It made sense to point the finger at physical disintegration, but, was there also an ebbing of self? I asked Mike if I've ever mentioned how I feel like I am dying once I started Geodone and he said no. Until then, it was a vocal complaint at least once every three months.

Now that I am on a weaker drug I've got a new maxim. "To feel alive you must live with mild symptoms of the illness." The heavy anti-psychotic drugs that totally or near totally irradicate the schizophrenic symptoms also hit too hard mysterious parts of the person. It feels like I am picking up my life again at age 30, when I moved off Risperdal. I've got this memory line of internal feelings and sensations that pretty much stops with Zyprexa. I'd rather be mentally weaker and have that personal treasure trove of thought. It reaches back to childhood.

Read an email correspondance between Micheal and his brother. Mike is very blunt about my loss of "mental accuity" with Geodone. He correctly pointed out as well my utter lack of interest in selling art or taking part in art world business. I'm "happy and content just making art". It is true that I don't care about much else other than making art. I've even concidered quitting my museum volunteer job. At first it was because I was making outrageous mistakes with every customer but that fogginess has passed. Now it just seems that I have ants in my pants. It is hard to make time pass when there is no visitors or task to accomplish. Once the three hours flew by because I spent the entire time drawing. But last time once I was mentally spent on drawing all I wanted to do was leave. Oh, I hate clock watching. 

The trick at the museum is to bring a variety of materials that are good for a variety of concentration strength.  For instance, drawing materials are good for strong concentration.  But when I weaken I can't do it anymore.  That is a good time to switch over to reading a book or magazine.  The time I ran into trouble was when I brought only drawing materials and no light reading.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:21 AM EDT

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Mood:  irritated

The cats are beautiful while they sleep.  It is so hot here that they lie with furry tummies showing, paws splayed every which way.  Even as they sleep they are graceful.  And one position is never comfortable for very long.  They are continuously stretching and then shifting, eyes closed. 

The heat doesn't make me look beautiful.  I feel like a wet noodle.  We have an air conditioner that we could use in the bedroom (and then I would live in the bedroom) but we are saving money and not using it.  Our frugal living makes me proud.  But the heat combined with lousey eating habits is sapping my strength and giving me migrain headaches.  My bras are getting destroyed as well.  I sweat, the fabric weakens, and the underwire starts a tear and pokes out. 

The dog Cerberus has found the coolest spot in the house.  It is the tile bathroom floor.  Twice I have had to take his collar and drag him out of the bathroom, he is so reluctant to move.  Now I just let him lie by the toilet and step over him.

Posted by dignifyme at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 30 July 2006 10:12 AM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

Yesterday I spent a good two hours at the library making copies of my drawing.  I was increasing the size.  Had to cut pieces, (add an arm, add a head, add the bottom of the feet) and then tape them together because the copy machine only has one size paper.  There was my naked man at 125%, 118%, 112% and 108%. 

In the evening I put the different sized men on my board.  There is already a lady sketched in, so the men had to not only fit in the board but fit in the composition with another figure.  To my surprise, nothing pleased me.  I rooted around and found a copy of the man at the original 100%.  Today's task will be to redraw his head quite a bit smaller.  I had got all hot about the length of his legs and chest but now I realize that making a small head will promise me a large body - the body will be "enlarged" in the viewer's perception with a small head. 

While I was at the library I felt a little bit of quiet fear.  Just a nagging fear of the people around me that was easily overcome with common sense and control.  Such a haunting occured when I was on the weaker drug Risperdal about 7 years ago.  Fear is a big part of many people's schizophrenia and it is definately a symptom that I will have to live with.  I'm not naturally inclined to trust, every since I was a child the world has always been split in two, with numerous acquaintences and the few, hard won friends.

I'm sticking with the Geodone.  After this post I'm planning to go to the woods for a walk with my dog.  It is early in the morning and pleasantly cool.  The energy I feel within that makes the walk possible (a natural energy, the spring in the step of normal, drug free folk) is a result of the switch to Geodone.  My mind might be weaker, but given time my body will become strong again, - and more years added to my lifetime.  Obesity always results in an early death.  I need the energy of Geodone for my physical health.

Posted by dignifyme at 7:29 AM EDT

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Mood:  smelly

In my current painting "Cinderella" I put scarlet red and royal blue in the darkest dark places of shadow.

Before I went to sleep I felt like I would burst.  So much energy.  I was high off of being bold with color.  And my experiment worked.  It worked.  Mike said the picture is starting to look sharp and clear.  He doesn't know how this is happening in technical terms, just that it seems so.  Have to put the painting away to dry today, been looking at it too much.  Don't want to smudge or blend those brilliant shadow colors. 

The scary part is that I'm all alone with my art.  No teacher or mentor or professional to look to and share with.  It almsot feels maddening being so alone, so daring, and so touched to the very core of my being.  A strong statement to make, how putting dabs of paint on canvass can put me on my knees.  Silly artist.  Why so intense?

There was a story once told in my college religion class many many years ago.  If an ignorant peasant worships a stone as if it were a God, is this a religion of one?  With the potential to be as powerful as any other conventional religion?  For some reason I always imagine a Russian peasant down on his knees in the Siberian Stepp in front of a small stone in the dirt.  This stone, it is less than ten inches in diameter.  The peasant is focused and praying to his stone.  That is my picture of ridiculous.  All that will, belief and hope placed on something so small and ordinary.  How many stones do we pass every day that are less than ten inches wide?  Why did the peasant pick this one stone, and what good, what blessings, can the ordinary stone ever bring the peasant?

I was the Russian peasant yesterday with my red and blue strokes of paint. 

Posted by dignifyme at 9:46 AM EDT

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Mood:  not sure

My mother said to me, "You now sound like a normal person when I hear your voice on the phone.  Before you sounded sharp.  Too sharp."

A few nights later, while my husband and I were swinging on swings, playground sand beneith our feet, he said to me, "There is one change that we both know about."

"What is that?" I asked.

"You know.  We've talked about it before."

"I haven't a clue what you are refering to."

My husband sighed. "You've lost your edge."

Then I remembered. "Mom said that you were sad.  You rather enjoyed having me so intelligent and perceptive.  I was your trophy wife."

My husband ignored my good humor.  He warned, "You may not be able to write as well as you used to." 

Probably, at that moment, I smiled.  He is so new at this.  The Big medication change where abilities are lost and abilities are gained.  But I am an old hand.  I make my choice and stick to it.  Regret and sadness?  A small amount.  I'm only human.  But I'm also a mature woman and don't have time for excessive anger and fist shaking at God and fate.  In my head I have a picture of myself as a swimming shark.  This shark is me and I am ancient and relentless and the perfect machine for hunting fish.  But my fish is the fish of happiness.  Like a shark I will find it and I will swiftly gobble it.  Usually the ideas of sharks and happiness don't go together in most people's heads.  But they do in mine.

My prediction is that Geodone is going to be a drug for me like Risperdal.  I will lose some ability, in fact the family has already commented on what I have lost.  My husband says that I am more simple.  This is not enough information.  I push.  "Like a labotomy simple?"  No.  He says that he just has a general feeling that I am more simple.  But, he adds, I seem happy.  

Why would a girl endure such a change?  Two reasons.  First, I have already lost weight.  It won't be easy to continue losing weight, have to cut out the sweets and walk more, but the incessent hunger is now gone and I am satiated more easily.  As I write this I am wearing a white blouse that I haven't worn since last spring.  Before Geodone wearing it would have been indecent, the buttons were straining to pull apart at the bustline.

And then there is this.  My Risperdal period of art was prolific and astoundingly creative. (check www.schizophreniaandart.com).  It has long been my suspicion that there is an unequal balance between language making and image making in my mind.  Increase the abilities of one and the abilities of the other lessen, and vice versa.  Right now my imagination feels fruitfull.  Not languistically but pictoraly.  Last weekend Mike moved the track lighting in our bedroom and bolted three painting easles to the wall.  At this moment I am concidering painting in my white blouse.  It will be a foolish thing to do, but now that it is on I don't want to take it off.

Only time can prove how my art will change.  But change it will.  Currently I am finishing up canvasses that were started as long as three years ago.  Large differences will first appear in the craypas drawings (begun new and finished quickly).  I predict a return of mythological subject matter.  More dreamlike views.  Less relience on photographic source material.  And a freer use of color.   Color that is not logically related to the object.  Color that is needed only in relationship to the other colors; ie. the dress is red so paint the outline of the dress light blue and green.

It still takes a lot of hard work to create a piece of art.  Inspiration and drive is not magically raining down upon my head like a gift of mana from heaven.  Discipline is still nessesary to overcome the aimlessness of schizophrenia.

Enough.  I'm going to go paint.  More on the Geodone changes next post.

Posted by dignifyme at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Monday, 24 July 2006 8:04 AM EDT

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Mood:  vegas lucky

The friendly cat, who is afraid of no body and no thing, is called "Miss Grey". 

Occationally when she is in a generous mood the dogs are "Miss Plum" and "Mr. Cerberus".  The dogs  frequently are misbehaving, but they are also very cute, so they pull at your heart strings in every direction.  Boo, the black cat who is skittish and does not like change is addressed as plain Boo.  And I am called "Miss Karen". 

This could be a sarcastic title, because traditionally young people don't get along with a step mother.  But given the evidence of how the animals are treated, how their name changes when they are favored, I'm of the opinion that my nickname is an endearment.

"Miss Karen" is also always said in sweet tones.  Perhaps her voice is always sweet.  Eh, I'm won over.

London came to us on July 2nd, one day before her 21st birthday.   My husband and I had been preparing our home for a foster child who we wished to eventually adopt.  As part of the state investigation into our home and life, we needed five letters of reference from friends or relatives.  London wrote us a beautiful letter of reference.  It was emailed for us to proof read.  Yet the original letter dragged and was slow to be sent out.  And so I wondered, did this show a bit of reluctance?

During a Father's Day phone conversation it came out that London was unhappy.  She was doing what she could to change her circumstances.  But from her perspective it seemed that the person who was going to benefit from the new experience of financial and emotional stability in her father's life would be our adopted child.  It wasn't just jealousy.  It is my guess that London was angrey at a world that had moved on too quickly, her childhood rights and privilages had ended, and any chance to live in a safe, nurturing enviornment had passed. 

While Mike was at work I sent him an email.  The idea popped into my head that we could invite London to live with us, on our dollar, while she returned to school.  The foster child was not real yet, just a future phantom, and we had real family that had real needs to minister to first.  Since our apartment is only two bedroom the choice had to be between one child or the other.  Our resources are limited. 

The first night London was here I asked her to dream a bit.  If she could get anything out of her stay with us, what would that be?  London said her first wish was to re-connect with her father and simply enjoy his company.  Her second wish was to stay long enough to get her Bachelor's degree.  A friend had warned her that his Associate's degree had done nothing to help him find work.   This news delighted both Mike and myself because we wanted, when London was ready to launch into the world, her to go with as much strength and advantage as possible.

Mike had been secrety hoping for some time that we might open our door and have London stay with us.  However, he rightly guessed that the only way it could happen without my feeling resentment (a new bride wanting a young child of her own.....) would be if the idea was first suggested by me rather than him.  So he played a waiting game and kept his finger's crossed.  Never did I feel pressured or manipulated.  Quite the opposite.  Interesting husband I have.

Happily, London is a young woman who brushes her teeth every day, makes her bed every morning, does laundry frequently, and takes her dog into her shower with her.  Thus she always smells fresh, her dog's fur is soft, and her room is always neat when you walk by and look in.  Our apartment is old so the walls are very thick and we can't hear her hardly at all when she talks on the phone or listens to television.  Most of the time she is on her computer.  A self proclaimed "geek", London's obsession is Japanese anime and internet role playing games.  Both fantasy pursuits she takes seriously and spends long hours quietly entertaining herself.  There is an enormus amount of writing involved in the online roleplaying games and from what I hear she creates very popular, memorable characters.  My guess is that one day London will become a famous published author of science fiction or fantasy books and people will look at her life and exclaim with envy, "You get paid for doing that?!"

Posted by dignifyme at 9:28 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 23 July 2006 9:02 AM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

Walk down the street one block.

The river is deep in one spot.

Tree branches overhead.

Both dogs swim.

Walk in with my dress on.

Moss on the rocky banks.

Walk home.

Peace in my heart.

Posted by dignifyme at 7:37 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 19 July 2006 7:48 PM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

When I start a painting I start badly.  What saves the final work is rough draft after rough draft.

I wanted to do a picture of "The Lady" who I mentioned yesterday.  She is an African woman dressed in white.  Her dress is all lace and antiquated.  Her posture is stiff, her deminor is grave and elegant. 

Next, what was needed was a place to put the Lady in.  She needed a background and perhaps another figure in the painting.

Imagining a male nude is one thing, to draw it I always use a photographic reference.  I have a small art library at home.  Usually there is never a photograph of exactly what I want so I use multiple photographs and rather morph them together; an arm from here, a back from there, a foot from somewhere else.

This pose was proving particularly difficult.  So I asked Mike for help.  On his computer is an artificial picture maker called "Poser".  In Poser the human figure can be twisted and turned, mounted, muscles pumped up, pulled at with gravity, and the light source manipulated.  Using this sketch I asked Mike to make the same pose in Poser and print it out on a piece of paper. 

What I got was a great reference for correct proportion.  Poser is a library of human anatomy ratios.  While figures are turned in three dimentional space the perspective of the nude is continuously corrected. 

It is rather like playing with a doll in your computer.  Mike is particularly good at the program because it relies upon mathmatical instinct.  The method of using the program is not like a video game where, as you move a stick, so the figure rotates and moves.  There are a lot of numbers to be manipulated in the Poser program; and Mike is good at numbers.

Finally I was ready to put "The Lady" in an appropriate setting.  What is appropriate for someone from the spirit world?  This is what my imagination came up with.  Beauty and wisdom in a savage place.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:56 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 20 July 2006 6:42 AM EDT

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Mood:  cool

My husband knows what a religious experience is.  I don't.  He was born and raised in the Bible belt and had his first of several when he was seventeen. 

A few weeks ago I told him about a conversation I had with my four imaginary spirit guides.

Being a person with schizophrenia, you must understand what I mean by imaginary.  They are no different then the images I see in my mind before I paint or when I am planning a painting.  I never visually see my guides in front of me as if they were a hallucination.  One of them, whom I call "The Lady" has visited me twice before in a dream and each time she visits it is to teach me something.  The first time we meet the lesson was about communication.  And the point, or punch line of the the dream was that it was time to tell Micheal that I loved him.  Which I did in a letter the next day.  The day after that he wrote me a letter saying that he loved me as well, and this exchange, three years ago, was the start of our real love relationship.

Two guides I met through a psychic I was friends with back in Winsted, Connecticut.  I now have a picture in my mind of Genevieve Schweizer, my dead grandmother, and a gaurdian angel.  If I talk to them in my imagination, they respond either by a physical gesture, additional imagry, or words.  Again, the things are never seen or heard as real voices or hallucinations - it is communication through the old fashioned, much used process by which I create imagry for my artwork.  It is a bit like having a dream while you are awake.  A daydream.  Only the plot is never very long.  Spirits don't muck about.  They aren't shy and they aren't misleading.  Whenever we are told a new idea that idea may take us a day or two or more to understand, but such confusion is like the lifting of a vail.  Once the vail is gone you see and understand perfectly well.

So, what happened three weeks ago.

I was lying on a fold-out bed at my mother's home.  Mike and I were there to give Mom's carrage house apartment a new tile floor.  It was the middle of the day and I was resting while Mike worked.  The room was dark, all the shades drawn and a ceiling fan whirled quietly.  My four friends were clear in my mind's eye.  And the five of us began to have a conversation.

I asked the Lady why I couldn't image her face smiling.  I mean, I could imagine it, I can imagine anything, but the picture was a characture of a smile.  I was putting on her face what I wanted, manipulaing my imagination and the effect was a certain farce.  All the time I have ever seen her she is very somber and dignified.

"Why won't you smile for me?" I asked her, silently, in my imagination.

"When you learn how to create in joy I will smile for you" she promised.

See, if you have been reading my posts you know that I work at my art wether I want to or not and at times I push myself almost like I am a machine.  Always I have seen myself as a process person, the final product is the end result of many small steps each carefully measured.  I am not messy, spontanious, or instinctual.  I am intellectrual and driven.  This is not just a style of work, this is the style of my personality.  It has been so for years and years.  I am after all the daughter of a research scientist.

Other things were discussed.  But this exchange about art was the most significant.  While I was with my four friends I had a feeling of being a cup full of wine.  Full to the brim with a dark, sweet, liquid.  Of this feeling the four told me that this is the way that they always feel on the other side of life.

At that time I had just finished painting a bedroom in our apartment the prettiest color green.  I was preparing for the arrival of Mike's daughter London and her dog Cerberus to come live with us while London is going to school for her bachelor's degree.

Part of my good feeling was the love of a job well done.  I created a room of serenity and peace.  What London thought of it or did with it was beyond my control.  All I knew was that I had prepared well for her visit.

My spirit friends pointed out that this is what they do in the spirit world.  They prepare a world here for us.  What we do with their gifts, whether we can see them and appreciate them is out of their control.  But they are fullfilled with the act of creation, making a metaphorical room for each of us to inhabit.  They are a step ahead of us in time just as I was a step ahead of London in time.  I made her room while she was still living in Michigan, no doubt wondering what life would be like living with her father's new wife.

I am not certain what I told Mike of my waking dream.  It all seemed so ordinary.  Honestly, it was quite a surprise when he said, you've just had a religious experience.  

When we returned to Vermont I began preparation plans to pull apart my paint easils and bolt them to the walls of my bedroom.  I am going to be painting standing up.  Now that London has arrived there is far less space in the apartment - no place for a standing easle.  Frankly, her exuberent pup Cerberus can and does knock many things over with his tail.  My paintings can be hiked up to the ceiling while they dry.  No elbow, tail, or wet nose will harm them.

The mystery of what it means to "create in joy" is still present.  But I am certain that pulling apart my easles and mounting paintings on the wall is a first step toward a new art.  There are other guesses mulling about in my head.

What a lovely challenge is offered.

Posted by dignifyme at 11:01 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 19 July 2006 12:04 AM EDT

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